The Essex Local Delivery Pilot

Led by Active Essex, the Essex Local Delivery Pilot (ELDP) aims to build healthier, more active communities across the county. An active lifestyle creates huge benefits for the health and wellbeing of individuals and families, as well as making local communities more vibrant, connected, and resilient.

In the past year, the ELDP has been able to scale up test and learn projects such as Essex Pedal Power and ParkPlay, benefitting even more residents living in our most deprived communities. It has also become clear that utilising a whole system approach on a number of projects, helps to strengthen and shape future work.

Since 2019, a proactive approach has been taken by the ELDP to understand ABCD and have used it to underpin their work, and so far there have been a number of positive outcomes. If leadership can be distributed to the local community, then they will take responsibility and ownership of creating opportunities to reduce physical inactivity. They have the local lived experience, meaning they understand the needs and wants of their local community.

In 2023, the ELDP worked in partnership with the Active Essex Foundation charity to embed and sustain the ABCD movement initiated by the ELDP. The Active Essex Foundation have designed and delivered new ABCD workshops using examples from the ELDP, as well as creating a network of people who have attended ABCD training, and are driving forward the Essex ABCD Stewardship circle of system leaders.

The LDP tested a new 7-day leadership course; Leading with Courage and Empathy, which focused on developing leadership behaviours and practices that will lead to system change to enable healthier, more active communities across the county. 13 system leaders from the Essex LDP attended the course, which was structured around the ‘Theory U’ work of Otto Scharmer. Participants were encouraged to consider how complexity and uncertainty can be seen as a place of possibility from which we can re-imagine and re-build the way we work by leading more courageously with an open mind, open heart, and open will.

A key aspect of the ELDP has been the importance of capacity building within key locally trusted organisations (LTO) who are delivering innovative physical activity and sport with target audiences in deprived communities. Expert partner, Mark Gerbaldi, has worked closely with 17 LTOs who are a key part of the LDP work by providing expert advice on governance and policies, as well as developing business and fundraising plans. Mark has supported the LTOs to bring in over £2 million of new funding from funders such as National Lottery Community Fund, Postcode Places Trust, Children in Need, South Essex Homes, Basildon NHS Alliance, PHAB, Essex Community Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund, and StreetGames.

The ELDP takes an approach to evaluation that utilises realist methodology, which considers not only ‘what works’, but ‘how’ and ‘why’. With the support of an academic partner, the team of embedded researchers has been collecting data to test ideas around themes such as embedding physical activity within the youth justice system, place-based working, and developing relationships with other teams.

The Active Essex Insight & Evaluation team have taken advantage of the opportunity to test new methodology such as Realist-Informed Ripple Effects Mapping, which is a highly participatory approach to reflecting on, and mapping out what the team has done. It focuses on the expected and unexpected impacts before diving further into how and why they occurred.

The Social Return on Investment represents a complimentary method to the realist evaluation. The evaluation and SROI activities have been streamlined together to ensure coherence between the two pieces of work.

Over the past year, the importance of learning from evaluation findings, particularly within the ELDP, has become more prevalent, to help develop the understanding of what works in local communities. A number of deep dive evaluation reports have been produced which outline successes, challenges and learnings and help to understand the potential of specific projects and ways of working to be scaled and/or replicated. An example of this has been evaluating the impact of the Prevention and Enablement Model, which has provided fundamental findings and key recommendations around system-led opportunities, workforce and the hardwiring of physical activity to help improve the lives of people living with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions. This has since developed into ‘Reconnect’, which has been mainstreamed by Adult Social Care.

Chris Boardman, Chairman of Sport England and National Active Travel Commissioner for Active Travel England, visited Find Your Active Basildon to meet with LDP funded projects and system leaders. Hosted by Basildon Council, Chris visited Essex Pedal Power at Basildon Hospital, ATF at Northlands Park, and met with over 30 system leaders for an informative share and learn session at Ford.